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'It always started in my head. It felt like the roots of my hair went fuzzy and tingled, but the feeling was good. If the trigger for this feeling went on long enough, the tingles and relaxation would spread down my neck and shoulders, down my arms and into my belly and all the way through to my feet, so long as I wasn't interrupted in any way or the trigger was broken off or stopped."

Laura Anderson, a 30-year-old photography student from Silsden, West Yorkshire, is describing her early memories of what is known online as ASMR. The initials stand for "autonomous sensory meridian response", which essentially means involuntary head tingling. The word "meridian", an unscientific term used in acupuncture...

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